The Daughters of Fire

National Premiere

Three young sisters are separated by the eruption of the great Fogo, in Cape Verde. Pedro Costa builds a penetrating portrait of these women (interpreted by singers Elizabeth Pinard, Alice Costa and Karyna Gomes) whose faces the eruption radiates in their poignant singing: one day we will know why we live and why we suffer.

Pedro Costa will be present.

[In the same program will be screened Jean-Luc Godard's last film, Trailer of the Film That Will Never Exist: "Phony Wars", also premiered in Cannes and Straub-Huillet's Einleitung zu Arnold Schönbergs Begleitmusik zu einer Lichtspielscene. And also the launch of the Portuguese edition of Jacques Rancière's book Pedro Costa – Les Chambres du cinéaste.]

At the end of the session there will be a conversation between Víctor Erice and Pedro Costa.

Duration: 9'
Production year: 2023
Country: PT
Language: PT

Cannes Film Festival 2023 Festival – Official Selection Special Screenings

Pedro Costa

Widely acclaimed as Portugal's greatest living filmmaker, Pedro Costa was born in Lisbon in 1959. A History student at the University of Lisbon, he gave up his studies to attend the classes of poet and director António Reis at the Lisbon Theatre and Film School, where he ended up enrolling, and soon worked as an assistant director to Jorge Silva Melo, Vítor Gonçalves and João Botelho. His first feature film, O Sangue, had its world premiere at the Venice Film Festival in 1989, and already displayed the distinctive tone of a work marked by both political and poetic attention to marginalised lives. His second film, Casa de Lava (1994), shot in Cape Verde, was shown at the Cannes Film Festival. This was followed by the famous Fontaínhas trilogy, consisting of Ossos (1997), In Vanda's Room (2000) and Colossal Youth (2006), in which he portrays the lives of the men and women – immigrant, racialised, impoverished – who inhabit this slum neighbourhood on the outskirts of Lisbon. Costa also directed Where Does Your Hidden Smile Lie? (2002), with Danièle Huillet and Jean-Marie Straub, and Change Nothing (2009), with actress Jeanne Balibar. In 2012, he was part of the collective feature film Centro Histórico, alongside Manoel de Oliveira, Aki Kaurismäki and Víctor Erice. In 2014, Horse Money won the Golden Leopard for Best Direction at the Locarno Film Festival and, in 2019, Vitalina Varela won the Golden Leopard for Best Film at the same festival.

Original title: As Filhas do Fogo

Pedro Costa

Credits